Documentation of the Native American Ceramic Vessels from Northeastern Texas, Southern Arkansas, and Eastern Oklahoma in the Boyce Smith Museum in Troup, Texas

The Boyce Smith Museum opened in 1968 with the purpose of displaying a large collection of Historic artifacts as well as Native American artifacts collected and/or purchased over the years by Mr. Boyce Smith of Troup, Texas, now deceased. After learning of the museum in 2002, and taking a short visit to the museum at that time, it was apparent that the Boyce Smith Museum contained an important collection of Native American ceramic vessels that warranted documentation. With the permission of Jo Beth Smith, the wife of Boyce Smith, and their son Rial Smith, we returned to the Boyce Smith Museum on December 10-11, 2007, to document 157 ceramic vessels from Caddo sites in eight counties in Northeastern Texas (n=136), Caddo and Mississippian sites in five counties in southern Arkansas (n=20), and from the Spiro site in LeFlore County, in eastern Oklahoma (n=1) (Figure 1 and Table 1). In almost all instances, the only available provenience information for the vessels in the Boyce Smith Museum is the state and county, although in a very few cases, a specific site and/or location within a county is included in Mr. Smith’s collection notes